If you are a collector, you know that it’s an inclination in you that not all of your family or friends will understand. Sometimes motivated by lofty goals such as preservation of a particular symbol of our culture, other times motivated by greed or the need to possess; collectors come in all sizes, shapes, and temperaments. Even among obsessive collectors, not all collecting behavior is alike. On a recent trip to Orrtanna, Pennsylvania, I checked out two local attractions, which I think proved exactly that. It’s odd that both of these places are about an eighth of a mile away from each other, so similar in the sheer size of their collections, and yet so different in other ways.

First, we visited Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum. You can’t miss it, if you’re driving on Route 30 between Gettysburg and Chambersburg. There’s a life-sized elephant named Commander Robert Eli standing in the yard, spouting water into a pond. Behind him are two life-sized giraffes; not a common sight at all in the Buchanan Valley area of Pennsylvania. Coming up from the gravel parking lot, you see another large elephant sculpture: Ellie Phant, who bats her eyes and talks to visitors. It was fun taking pictures of the outdoor sculptures in the yard, but the real entertainment is inside.

Ed Gotwalt’s collection of elephants, which began in 1975, numbers over 6,000. Not one of them is a real elephant. But it is an amazing assemblage of representations of elephants from many countries and cultures. Some are whimsical, some life-like, and some even functional (how about a elephant-shaped potty seat for toddlers?).

As you wander through the “museum,” you find rooms of elephants, giraffes, t-shirts, etc., that are for sale, that is, not part of the collection. Okay, so it’s also a giant gift store, too. But somehow it’s not as in-your-face a tourist trap as South of the Border is. And Mister Ed’s really delivers, because his collection, in all its awesome size, is on display throughout the building. Then you discover that he also sells candy and roasted peanuts. We found this an enjoyable place to spend an hour. Here are some photographs that I took which I posted on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/sets/72157604747475283/

On the other side of the road, and just up the road a small piece, there is the barn at Orrtanna. You can’t miss it, either, but for a different reason. It’s a fairly large barn, with a faded Mail Pouch tobacco advertisement on it, as well as one for the local playhouse, the Totem Pole. But what really catches your eye is all the junk in the front yard.

I visit a lot of antique and thrift stores, but this one is different. There’s so much stuff, but most of it is not worth buying. In fact, there were bushel baskets full of a ceramic object whose name and purpose neither Bob nor I could identify. I’d like to think that at one time, there had been things of value in this place, but it was bought up by smart collectors. However, I can’t make that work in my head. There’s just too much crap (in the yard, that is; not in my head). About half of the junk is out in the yard, all day and all night, throughout the year. Much of it is broken or rusty, and should be hauled off to the dump. There are hundreds of bottles, but none of them are remarkable. Someone should tell the owner that there’s a difference between collectibles and recyclables, and what he has are recyclables.

Inside the barn, there were things that wouldn’t have lasted outside, such as books, records, papers, clothes, leather, etc. But this is not a climate-controlled environment that would preserve their condition much better than leaving them out in the yard. And I cannot discuss this place without mentioning that the barn has the scariest floor I have ever walked on, and that includes Mark Cline’s haunted house. At any moment, I thought I might fall through the plywood floor, yet my curiosity at what I might find kept me walking slowly, but carefully, onward.

Most of the time, we wandered alone, with no sign of a salesperson anywhere. Then, a couple of times, an old man popped out, seemingly out of nowhere, to ask if we had any questions. Later, when I actually did find something worth purchasing (a teacup and three small bowls made of melamine plastic), it took me ten minutes to find him. I asked him how much, and he said “Fifty cents.” “Each?” I asked. No, he said, fifty cents for all of them. I felt sorry for the guy, and told him I would give him one dollar. It’s one of the few times I’ve actually talked a seller UP.

I think the owner of this barn is a hoarder, which is a totally different kind of obsessive collecting than what Mister Ed does. There’s no point to it, nothing to be learned by looking at all the old and broken and worthless things that he has amassed. They may even be a health hazard.

On the other hand, it was visually compelling to view the breadth of the detritus that is stored there. The photographs I posted on Flickr may give a better idea. Be sure to look for the mystery object, and if you know what it is, please contact me. Otherwise, it may haunt me for the rest of my life. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/sets/72157604747455535/

Bob and I both collect things. I’m less serious about collecting, or perhaps my gathering is less focused than some people. I like a little clutter because it makes my environment interesting, but I don’t like too much junk just sitting around not justifying its presence. Bob is more like Mister Ed. He only collects pencil sharpeners. He even bought two pencil sharpeners from Mister Ed’s, although neither were of elephants. Go figure. Eventually, photographs of them will show up on http://www.bobcantor.com/. I wonder if Bob would consider re-naming his collection “Mister Bob’s Pencil Sharpener Museum?

I remember talking to another collector friend when I first met Bob, and told her that he collected pencil sharpeners. Being another collector, she did not think it weird. She sounded almost envious that I had found a potential mate that understood collecting. Lucky me! As time went on, I found he had even more admirable traits.

This just in…Maryland is considering designating a state dessert, the Smith Island cake. I’ve lived in Maryland all my life and I have never heard of this dessert, although it does sound delicious. But don’t our legislators have better things to do?

“The State of the Cake: Smith Islanders Say Maryland Can Have Its Official Dessert, As Long as It’s The Real Deal,” Washington Post, April 23, 2008, Food section.

Bob and I are big Jeopardy! fans. Many times, contestants are quizzed on their knowledge of U.S. state symbols. Since Bob has only lived in Maryland for about a half a year, he didn’t know Maryland’s state symbols. He later went to the Maryland State Archives web site to bone up on his adopted state.

The state crustacean of Maryland is the blue crab. The state dog is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The state boat is the skipjack. There’s also the oriole, the black-eyed Susan, and even a state dinosaur, Astrodon johnstoni. All of these have a connection to Maryland or to the region.

And then Bob reminded me of something that makes me sore: the state folk dance is square dancing. It’s not mountain square dancing which I have enjoyed, but the highly structured Modern Western Square Dance (MWSD), a recreation club activity that dates back to the 1920s at the earliest. I’m not sore because it wasn’t my kind of square dance that became the state folk dance, even though I think it’s more inclusive and more genuinely a folk dance; I don’t think any dance should get that honor. Having a government agency determine a state folk dance is the antithesis of the folk process, but the sponsors of the bill didn’t see this irony at all. These so-called square dancers weren’t interested in finding the most representative folk dance for Maryland, they just wanted the “honor” for themselves.

At the time the legislation was being debated, in 1994, I dealt with it by writing a well-researched article for the Old-Time Herald explaining exactly what they were trying to do, and why I thought it was a terrible idea. If you read the article, you will find that it didn’t just happen in Maryland. And before their state-by-state campaign, the MWSD-ers tried and failed to have square dance declared the national folk dance.

My one consolation is that I believe the presence of my article on the Internet has made it available to congressional researchers every time they (the Modern Western Square Dance organizations) sucker some Congressman into sponsoring this legislation. It is usually referred to a committee right away and never do-si-dos its way out. After all, the U.S. Congress has more important things to do. After more than two hundred years of existence, this country has only a handful of national symbols: the flag, the Great Seal, the national anthem, the bald eagle, and the American rose. I think Congress is afraid of opening the flood gates to all kinds of “national” designations.

I’d like to see a Jeopardy! game with “state folk dance” as the category. As nearly every state legislature now has been hoodwinked into making square dance their state folk dance, what better way to show the stupidity of their decisions.

My last post uncharacteristically serious, so I feel like I have to balance it with something upbeat and funny. My favorite wacky sculptor, Mark Cline, is at it again. According to the News-Virginian, he’s erected statues of Batman and Spiderman on the town courthouse of Lexington, Virginia. They will only be there for a week, and then he’ll take them down. Even better news is his plan to create a work called Hannibal in the Blue Ridge with life-sized elephants, to be up in time for October’s Fall Foliage Festival in Waynesboro.

Yesterday, I pulled out one of my old journals from 1998, just to see how different my life was back then. Looking at where I used to be helps me appreciate how far I’ve come.

Ten years ago, I was living in this same house, alone. When I bought it a couple of years earlier, I had moved into it with a boyfriend named Marty with whom I’d already lived for about two years. He didn’t want me to buy the house. He said, “I don’t think you should buy a house until I am ready to buy it with you.” I asked him when he thought that would be. I thought if there was something he was waiting for, something that we could work toward together, I might be willing to put it off buying the house. He said that he didn’t know when he’d be ready, or if he’d ever be ready, but he still felt that I shouldn’t buy a house without him. Because owning a house had been a dream of mine since before I met him, and because his answer lacked any room for hope or compromise, I went ahead and bought the house in my own name. He didn’t like it, but he still moved into the new house with me.

By April 1998, he had moved out, although we were still trying to stay a couple. Over the two years following my purchase of the house, both of his sons had moved in with us, having each separately been kicked out of the Navy before completing boot camp. Marty’s children had been living with his ex-wife. As soon as they turned eighteen, she had them sign up for the Navy to get them out of the house. When each of them managed to be asked by the Navy to leave, she then gave them plane tickets to D.C. to live with their father. Marty was as unwilling to parent these nearly grown men as I was unprepared to deal with their living habits.

For a while, it was just Marty, me, and Son #1, whose living habits were poor. He didn’t clean up after himself, he was marginally employed, and had no interest in college or anything beyond country music and NASCAR. Once we ran out of bath towels and found all of them dirty and piled waist high in his closet. He left a pornographic videotape in the VCR which I discovered accidentally because I thought it was the tape I had put in to record a TV show. Ironically, I was attempting to catch the episode of “Ellen,” in which she comes out as a lesbian. When I turned on the tape, I could see two women doing something, and then I realized, “Wait a minute; this is way too explicit for broadcast TV.” Marty wanted to punish his son by keeping the tape himself, which showed how seriously he took my feelings about this offense. Once, we came home from a weekend trip, and Marty couldn’t find his toothbrush. Although I suggested that his son might have taken it, he refused to believe it until I went to the boy’s bathroom and located it hidden in a drawer in the vanity. Son #1’s explanation? He had had an overnight guest and she had forgotten her own. Marty couldn’t understand why I was so offended. I asked, “Do you think, when he was invading our private bathroom, somewhere he was told not to go, that he knew it was your toothbrush he borrowed? It could have been mine!” When Son #2 moved in several months after the first, things got worse.

Marty didn’t feel compelled to do much about their behavior. If I brought it up, he reminded me that he hadn’t wanted to buy the house, and since I was the head of the household, I would have to deal with them. Both sons were quick to figure out that if their father wasn’t willing to back me up, they could do whatever they wanted. When Son #1 ran up an expensive phone bill calling a 900 number for a psychic, Marty just paid the bill, and I put a block on outgoing 900 numbers.

That’s how the situation deteriorated to the point at which I said to Marty, “You can stay if you want to, but your kids have got to go.” I felt that whether or not they were ready to live on their own, I couldn’t have them living with me any more. I’d come home from my new job and the Library of Congress exhausted mentally from trying to succeed in an organization larger than any library I’d ever worked in before, with a unique culture, new responsibilities, and people who didn’t seem to be able to relate to me yet. At home, I was the only one willing to take on many chores that should have been split up between four ostensible adults. I felt like I was headed for a breakdown unless I reduced the stress in my life. Of the two main stressors in my life, work was the one I simply couldn’t give up. On the other hand, Marty and his kids could have done things to reduce the stress on me, but wouldn’t. The choice was obvious.

Marty found a place for all three of them to live, and moved them all out of my house. He provided them with a safe, comfortable place to live, but didn’t plan on paying for a telephone or cable TV. After only a month, the boys informed him that they’d found their own place to live, and that they were moving out. That’s how, in April 1998, Marty was living alone in his apartment and I was living alone in my house. We were still seeing each other, but our relationship was tense. Ten years ago in April, the inevitable hadn’t happened yet. Maybe I’ll write about that in August.

At the same time that I was dealing with this personal drama, I was also taking a writing workshop at the Writer’s Center. My goal was to write about the years just before and after I became disillusioned with the religion in which I was raised. I have still have notes from ten years ago, including some supportive remarks on one of my drafts from my instructor, Sara Taber. She wrote a lovely memoir of her years living in Patagonia, and I hoped that I could learn to tell my story as artfully as she told hers. But as my struggles with my personal life worsened in the months that followed April 1998, I did not have enough energy to pursue writing and also make the tough choice I needed to make about my relationship with Marty.

Even now, writing about myself for the world to see scares me. I’m going to post this message, not knowing if people will think badly of me for kicking Marty and his kids out of my house. I’ve decided that if anyone does feel that way about me, it is due to my failure as a writer to express all that was going on, both in my house and in my mind. But I won’t think it’s because I’m a bad person, or that I was wrong to do what I had to do for my sanity.

In the same way, I’m afraid if I write my memoirs, people will question my version of events or be offended by my negative opinions about organized religion. I suspect it will be harder to convince people to agree with my convictions about religion than to convince them that it was the right thing to do to break up with Marty. I doubt the lack of approval for either will change my mind. Looking back, I realize that the choices I made in the past opened up the possibility of me as I am now.

A lot has happened in ten years. After Marty and broke up for good, I was sad and depressed a lot of the time. If struggling in a bad relationship made it hard for me to write, then it was even worse afterwards. I haven’t worked as hard on my story since the break up as I did before. Once in a while I try, but I haven’t yet been able to sustain the effort. At least now, I have a better excuse: three and a half years ago, I met Bob, and we just got married in November 2007. I find it hard to summon up the energy for my career, my significant relationships, and also creative writing. Usually, it’s writing that gets the short shrift. The good news is that however much energy I think I’m putting into my relationship with Bob, I’m getting an exponentially better payoff for it than I did with past relationships. The fact that I’m writing for this blog is a sign that Bob and I are giving each other the space we need to pursue our individual artistic interests. In fact, as I write this, he’s in his studio working on a painting.

Ten years from now, who knows where I’ll be?